Goodreads asked C.L. Clark:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

C.L. Clark The advice I most want to give to writers changes periodically, but what has been on my mind recently is this:

Don't flatten the world we live in by insisting on remaining "unproblematic" or insisting that the books you read (or the books published) be unproblematic or morally unblemished. Don't toss out classics because they were written in a time of racism, as if they have nothing else to teach us. Don't become so dogmatic about a "correct" moral stance that your story becomes a watered down polemic with characters whose complexity is as deep as a teaspoon.

And please, please, please, don't explain every thought and occurrence in the characters' head before they act on it. Especially the obvious ones.

Also, read older books. It's good to know your contemporaries, but it's also good to not sound exactly like them.

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